Deadly Lullaby (34 page)

He says, “Please come by the Leopard Spot to see me, and do so soon. I have another gift for you of a more, shall we say, bankable nature. One that should assist you in the event your department discontinues your salary.”

I'm fucking beaming now. “Thank you. I'll definitely stop by.”

“Excellent. I am interested in hearing the details of how you came to appear in that alley last night. Is this something you will share with me?”

Give up Monique? No way. “Sorry, but I can't do that. I made a sincere promise to keep that source confidential. If your gift is contingent on me breaking that promise, I'll have to refuse it.”

“Oh, no, please, you misunderstand me. I am merely seeking to satisfy my curiosity, nothing more. I appreciate the honor behind your stance and would not attempt to sway you from it. This is the trait I admired about you from the start of our relationship, Detective Crucci. You are an honorable man.”

Soon after that, my union-appointed lawyer stops by my room for a consultation. He's a gray and rumpled old warhorse named Pete Beranger, well-known in union circles for defending fallen LA cops. He listens intently to my story and asks no questions, finally saying he's rescued cops from the wreckage of worse jams. Barring further revelations, Pete says my reputation will take a beating, but I'll probably keep my job, at least in some form. “Staying with the department might entail a demotion in rank and pay,” he says, “which would put you back in uniform. It's just as likely we can avoid that, however. We have at least thirty days to prepare for the mandatory preliminary hearing, but we might want to try to make a quick kill of this thing before presently undiscovered witnesses step forward.”

“Whatever you think's best.”

“I'm not accusing you of anything, get that out of your mind right now. But, uh, just thinking out loud here, do you have any more information to give me I can trade in exchange for lenient treatment?”

Yeah, right. “No, I told you the truth, Pete, and the whole truth.”

He nods and strokes his chin, considering something else. “Is it true what I hear,” he finally says, “that your father is Babe Crucci?”

“He is, yeah.”

He lets that stew a beat or two and says, “You know, the department probably wants to avoid the publicity this fact would generate. They might be willing to strike a quick deal in secret before newspapers run with it. There's a flip side to it, however, that bothers me. Right now I can't decide whether the fact Babe's your father is good or bad.”

“Welcome to the fucking club,” I say.

Later, my doctor drops in and wakes me from a nap. Doc Render is a thin guy in horn-rims, about my age, with a quiet but pleasant bedside manner. He examines my pupils with a penlight, has me follow his fingers with my eyes while I hold my head still, and then studies my reaction as he snaps his fingers near my ears. He then watches me walk a straight line heel to toe, with my arms spread to my sides. Nodding, he says he'll discharge me in the morning unless my condition worsens overnight. “But you absolutely, positively cannot drive for at least two days,” Render says. “Head injuries are tricky, and I don't want you relapsing and killing somebody with a car. So have a friend or family member here to take you home in the morning, or you'll have to stay.”

The doc leaves and my thought is that I have no friend to call for a ride home. All my supposed friends are little more than acquaintances I hang with in bars, and there's no one I feel comfortable calling for a lift in the middle of their workday. There's usually a girlfriend or two in my life, but that's not the case now.

That leaves family members.

Nurse Feel-Good arrives to medicate me, and after she again refuses my marriage proposal—the fourth, fifth?—I call my father.

We've already exchanged a few vanilla text messages, and now we chat generally about my physical condition and the people I've dealt with today—minus Khang; for now, I want to keep that conversation to myself. I get pretty specific about my conversation with Abel, which concerns him. He claims the trouble I'm in is his fault and I disagree, listing all the reasons I'm keeping my mouth shut. He still grumbles and I tell him to forget it, let it drop. When I ask him if he can pick me up tomorrow morning, he says, “Sure, we can talk about the details later. Now that you are finished with all the cops and doctors and lawyers, I will stop by for a visit.”

“No, don't waste your time. I'm bushed and just had my bedtime dose of morphine. I'll be out cold for the night in a few minutes. I'll call you in the morning.”

“Are you sure? I do not mind just staying there with you while you—”

“I'm sure. Just stay in the comfort of your home. I'll be fine.”

He pauses a few seconds. “Okay, as you wish,” he eventually says, sounding disappointed. “Go to sleep, rest easy.”

After hanging up, I feel guilty that I didn't arrange my medication schedule so I could stay awake long enough to visit with my father. Running the last three days through my mind is like watching an old black-and-white movie sped up to ten times its normal speed—the camera angles slanted, the soundtrack often earsplitting and a jumble of noise, at other times dead silent. Not unlike my father's and my life together, in fact. Maybe some quiet time together would help us both decompress and sort it all out. But we'll have time for all that tomorrow, or maybe the next day, and the guilt soon fades away along with my consciousness…

…This dream of Khang ultimately comes to me. I'm strangely omniscient and know beyond doubt his call this afternoon was a ruse to lull me into inaction. A ninjalike assassin is now in my room, standing over me gripping a big knife—the one used to slice open Vannak's throat—and he's slowly moving in on me and I'm paralyzed, unable to prevent him from cutting me, when I wake with a start in the dead of night with a, “No, don't!”

There's a presence in the room, a rustling, and there, in the corner, streaked by street light cutting through the window blinds, is the old man, sitting in a chair. His feet are firmly planted on the floor, ready to spring, and his right hand rests on the bulge under his jacket. “Relax, kid,” he says. “It is me, your father.”

“What is wrong with my son, huh? Having a bad dream?”

“Yeah, about Khang sending somebody to whack my ass.”

“Which is one reason I am here. You all right?”

“It's my ribs. They squealed like hell when I jumped up.”

“Let me get your nurse, a nice little black girl—who, by the way, really digs you. She told me when I got here you can have pain relief whenever you want it.”

“No, that would zonk me out again. I'll be okay for a while. I'll incline the bed and talk.”

“Go back to sleep, if you want.”

“I don't want to.”

“It is your call….Hey, want a shot of tequila with a beer back?”

“You snuck in beer and tequila?!”

“Why not? Alcohol is the oldest form of pain relief known to man. Wait just a sec. I put the Corona on ice in the sink and have glasses already set up….Here is yours…and here is mine. Hold mine while I pull this chair next to the bed before we toast….All right, my son, here is to sucking wind.”

“I'll damn well drink to that….Ahh, nice, very nice. You got both my favorite brands.”

“When you are in the hospital, the smallest things from the outside bring you the greatest comfort.”

“You know, I remember you telling me something like that when I got my tonsils taken out. You brought me Cokes and mint chocolate-chip ice cream from Bennett's.”

“The pricks would not allow you Coke, and the hospital ice cream sucked. All they had was vanilla.”

“I thought you walked on water for doing that. Just before you showed up with the Coke and ice cream, I had just hung up from talking to Lorraine. She screamed at me to just make do with what the hospital had, she wouldn't even…”

“Visit you, yeah, I know….Your mother was, well, your mother.”

“I can't believe I mentioned her na—”

“No, do not apologize. Lorraine is a subject we should talk about.”

“…”

“Leo, don't look at me like that. Listen: I—I am sorry about your mother. I am….C'mon, kid, we should either clear the air once and for all or resolve to never speak of her again. Don't just sit there like a deaf-mute. Which way are you leaning?”

“I already know what happened.”

“You may think you do, but—”

“Connie told me before she died,
all right?
She said just before you got out of prison, Lorraine got gassed on booze and pills and spilled the fact that she and Bustamonte were going to whack you,
all right?
She said she tipped you off about it,
all right?
What they tried to do to you after, what
you
did to them, I have no fuckin' desire to hear about. I have a vivid enough imagination to fill in the goddamn blanks.”

“Connie never told me she told you about that.”

“She died that night.”

“I see. You have to believe me, Leo, I had no choice, it was—”

“Self-defense, yeah, yeah, and I never held it against you. I held it against both you idiots for being so damn dysfunctional. Hell, a normal woman finds a lover and asks for a divorce. A normal man finds out his wife's out to kill him and he calls the cops. But my parents? No, no, not my
goombah
parents. My parents had to live out a script they patched together from
The Postman Always Rings Twice
and
Prizzi's Honor.
”

“That is pretty good.”

“I'm not tryin' to be funny. The situation was fucked up beyond recognition. Do you have any idea what that did to me?”

“You? What do you think it did to me? It haunts me to this day. I do not care what you say, your imagination is not vivid enough to picture what went down. It was fucking horrible, and I reacted the way in which I am fully capable, worse even. But it was not what I wanted. I wanted to get home from prison, fall into your mother's arms, and live happily ever after. But instead she came at me with a fucking stun gun and Bustamonte jumped out of the—”

“E
nough.
”

“All right, all right, fuck.”

“Old man, I've come to prefer your initial idea: let's resolve to never talk about her again.”

“I want to say just one final thing: I miss her. I wish she was here.”

“
What?
I guess that makes one of us.”

“Leo, do not talk about your deceased mother that way. It is disrespectful.”

“Disresp—? God, this situation is
so
fucked up. Okay, you had your final say on her. Not a single further word—got it?”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it…Hey, you want another shot of tequila?”

“Do I ever.”

“Give me your glass, here, just what the doctor ordered….Heh heh, I might have gone a little heavy on the pour there, kid.”

“No, that's just about the right dose for me at this point.”

“What do we drink to now?”

“I don't know. How about to me keeping my job? Though doing that would be expressing something more like a fucking wish than a toast.”

“We will drink to it anyway. Here is to you keeping your job.”

“Cheers, old man.”

“Ahh…Jesus, kid, I cannot believe you drank all that in two gulps. Now, if your vocal cords still function, tell me what your lawyer told you.”

“Well, uh,
ahem,
yeah, I, uh, laid the story on him me and you cooked up last night on the way to the hospital—the same story I've been giving everybody, right?”

“And?”

“He thinks he can save my job, but chances are good I'll get busted back to uniform. And they'll put a formal reprimand in my jacket that'll practically guarantee no future promotions.”

“Damn, Leo, I feel responsible.”

“We already talked about that. I made the decisions and I'll live with them.”

“But you might have to go back to uniform.”

“No, if that's the best they offer, I'll probably tell my lawyer to try to strike a deal where I just resign with no reprimand. Or I'll just roll the dice with the Board of Rights at a hearing. I doubt I could do uniform again, not after rolling the streets as a detective. It would bore and embarrass me to tears. Besides, the money I make even as a detective sucks. There are other things I can do that pay better.”

“Yes, you are a great investigator and can rumble with the best around. Look, let me try to help you. You need to be in so-called corporate security.”

“
So-called
corporate security?”

“An old federal-prison buddy is now a high-ranking officer in a weapon-manufacturing company based in San Diego. They have an office and plant in Indy, too. He has offered me a job anytime I want it, one he describes as ‘high-level.' The job description is otherwise a little vague, sure, but nothing like I used to do. It will be a walk in the park, like taking candy from a baby, like shooting ducks in a—”

“You're worrying me, old man.”

“No need to worry. With your experience and talent, you can do it.”

“I'll think about it, but I don't want to pull a job out from under you.”

“No need to worry about that, either. If he has only one job to hand out, it is yours. I have all the money I reasonably need, and only view the job as something to keep me from rusting out. If he has two jobs to offer, then he has two.”

“The way you said that makes me—are you saying me and you would work at this company
together
?”

“I did not say that.”

“No, you didn't
say
it, you sneaky old man.”

“What?”

“You know what I mean. Hell, though, after the last three days, anything's possible. Let's forget about it for now and have a couple more drinks. Maybe we can talk about it tomorrow.”

“Over steak burritos.”

“At La Parrilla, sure, that sounds good.”

“At which time I will pay you the rest of the money I owe you.”

“Hey, yeah, I almost forgot about that.”

“Tomorrow you will be flush, my son, guaranteed. Then, well, uh, after we eat, you want to hit the Dodgers-Mets game with me?”

“Christ, old man, this is like the third, fourth time this week you've asked me to go to a ball game with you. Now you throw it at me when I'm drugged and drunk.”

“I know, I
know.
The thing is, see, now I have little doubt what your answer will be.”